Wednesday, April 24, 2002

Priests and Pedophilia

I'm Catholic, so I suppose I should weigh in on this. I think the scandal is something quite different from pedophilia. Really, the vast majority of the cases have been between priests and teenagers, which is something other than pedophilia. It's still morally wrong, of course, if for no other reason (and there are other reasons) than a priest has supposedly sworn off sex. But even that isn't really a scandal, it's just a problem that needs to be addressed. The scandal comes from certain Bishops' decsions to re-assign the offending priests to areas where they can continue their "activities," instead of properly getting their problems addressed. Which sounds like they're all pedophiles, they need mental help, but that's not entirely what I'm saying. The (very) few that are real pedophiles should be treated by a mental institution. The vast majority, however, are simply gay men (or even straight men who take advantage of young femal parishoners... that may even be the actual majority) who lack the self-control required to be a priest. They should be defrocked and sent to make a living doing something else. But that's not really a viable solution, even if it's the correct one, because of the severe shortage of priests. The only thing I can think to do about that is recruit more priests from places like South America, teach them English, and ship them to other parts of the world. I'm not entirely sure why this hasn't been done, actually. Is there anyone out there who can enlighten me on that?

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